Roger Mortimer was born in Mangakino, New Zealand in 1956. Since graduating with a BFA from Elam School of Fine Arts in 1999, Mortimer has exhibited regularly in Auckland and Wellington. His work was included in the Artspace shows Flesh and Fruity and After Killeen (2001) in Auckland, Portraiture (2003) at Te Tuhi, Pakuranga, and High Chair (2005) at ST PAUL St Gallery, Auckland.
In 2014 he was the Paramount winner of the Wallace Art Awards and subsequently spent six months at the International Studio and Curatorial Program in New York. In 2017, a survey exhibition of his work, ‘Dilemma Hill’, was shown in public galleries in Wellington and Auckland. His paintings feature in a range of significant public, corporate and private collections in New Zealand, Australia, Europe & USA. In 2021 Mortimer had three works included in the landmark exhibition “Oceania Now: Contemporary Art from the Pacific” at Christie’s in Paris – a showcase which represented a unique opportunity for the French and international market to engage with some of the most important and established artists working in New Zealand today. The same year also saw the publishing of: Apocrypha : The Maps of Roger Mortimer – a 160 page monograph with 7 essays examining Mortimer’s map paintings & weavings.
Mortimer is interested in the nature of attachment in the psychological sense. When this fundamental relational need is disrupted, it generates conflict, adaptive behavior and intense suffering. His paintings explore these themes and have been described as “an allegorical scrambling of time and geography, that pushes at the limits of the human imagination” [1], giving rise to a dense layering of colliding or intertwined worlds and systems. In Mortimer’s fantastical landscapes and watery coasts, people and creatures enact dynamic vignettes of horror and suffering, as well as the possibility of transformation.
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[1] John Hurrell: When Botticelli sailed to Taranaki, Eye Contact June, 2010
Selected Exhibitions
2020 Houhora, Föenander Galleries, Auckland
2019 Karori, Bartley + Company Art, Wellington Auckland Art Fair, Bartley + Company Art
2018 The Fisher King, Nadene Milne Gallery, Christchurch Tiwai, Bartley + Company Art, Wellington
2017 Dilemma Hill – a survey, Pātaka Art + Museum, Porirua Dilemma Hill– a survey, The Gus Fisher Gallery, Auckland Sydney Contemporary, Bartley + Company Art
2016 Resolution Island, Bartley + Company Art, Wellington Auckland Art Fair, Bartley + Company Art
2015 Te Waha, Bartley + Company Art, Wellington
2013 South Poetic Party, Bartley + Company Art, Wellington
2012 Manukau Banks, Ivan Anthony Gallery, Auckland
2011 The Messenger, Bartley + Company Art, Wellington
2010 Hapuku Lodge, Ivan Anthony Gallery, Auckland
2009 Apocrypha, Bartley + Company Art, Wellington
Feelings, Ivan Anthony, Auckland
2007 Intelligent Design, Ivan Anthony, Auckland
2006 A Glitch, Ivan Anthony, Auckland
2005 Supercover, Brooke/Gifford Gallery, Christchurch
The End of the World, Ivan Anthony Gallery, Auckland
2004 The Intimate Hours, Ivan Anthony Gallery, Auckland
2003 Letterstogina, Ivan Anthony Gallery, Auckland
2002 Madonna of the Shark, Ivan Anthony Gallery, Auckland
2001 Southern Collection Unit, Ivan Anthony Gallery, Auckland
2000 e-illumination, Ivan Anthony Gallery, Auckland